Stop the Looting of Social Security BEFORE it Happens!

I got this article off the Nation Magazine. We need to do something about this before it happens! I have gone to www.whitehouse.gov/contact and sent President Obama and email about how I feel on this subject! Just say no Mr. President!

Governing elites in Washington and Wall Street have devised a fiendishly clever "grand bargain" they want President Obama to embrace in the name of "fiscal responsibility." The government, they argue, having spent billions on bailing out the banks, can recover its costs by looting the Social Security system. They are also targeting Medicare and Medicaid. The pitch sounds preposterous to millions of ordinary working people anxious about their economic security and worried about their retirement years. But an impressive armada is lined up to push the idea--Washington's leading think tanks, the prestige media, tax-exempt foundations, skillful propagandists posing as economic experts and a self-righteous billionaire spending his fortune to save the nation from the elderly.

These players are promoting a tricky way to whack Social Security benefits, but to do it behind closed doors so the public cannot see what's happening or figure out which politicians to blame. The essential transaction would amount to misappropriating the trillions in Social Security taxes that workers have paid to finance their retirement benefits. This swindle is portrayed as "fiscal reform." In fact, it's the political equivalent of bait-and-switch fraud.

Defending Social Security sounds like yesterday's issue--the fight people won when they defeated George W. Bush's attempt to privatize the system in 2005. But the financial establishment has pushed it back on the table, claiming that the current crisis requires "responsible" leaders to take action. Will Obama take the bait? Surely not. The new president has been clear and consistent about Social Security, as a candidate and since his election. The program's financing is basically sound, he has explained, and can be assured far into the future by making only modest adjustments.

But Obama is also playing footsie with the conservative advocates of "entitlement reform" (their euphemism for cutting benefits). The president wants the corporate establishment's support on many other important matters, and he recently promised to hold a "fiscal responsibility summit" to examine the long-term costs of entitlements. That forum could set the trap for a "bipartisan compromise" that may become difficult for Obama to resist, given the burgeoning deficit. If he resists, he will be denounced as an old-fashioned free-spending liberal. The advocates are urging both parties to hold hands and take the leap together, authorizing big benefits cuts in a circuitous way that allows them to dodge the public's blame. In my new book, Come Home, America, I make the point: "When official America talks of 'bipartisan compromise,' it usually means the people are about to get screwed."

The Social Security fight could become a defining test for "new politics" in the Obama era. Will Americans at large step up and make themselves heard, not to attack Obama but to protect his presidency from the political forces aligned with Wall Street interests? This fight can be won if people everywhere raise a mighty din--hands off our Social Security money!--and do it now, before the deal gains momentum. Popular outrage can overwhelm the insiders and put members of Congress on notice: a vote to gut Social Security will kill your career. By organizing and agitating, people blocked Bush's attempt to privatize Social Security. Imagine if he had succeeded--their retirement money would have disappeared in the collapsing stock market.

To understand the mechanics of this attempted swindle, you have to roll back twenty-five years, to the time the game of bait and switch began, under Ronald Reagan. The Gipper's great legislative victory in 1981--enacting massive tax cuts for corporations and upper-income ranks--launched the era of swollen federal budget deficits. But their economic impact was offset by the huge tax increase that Congress imposed on working people in 1983: the payroll tax rate supporting Social Security--the weekly FICA deduction--was raised substantially, supposedly to create a nest egg for when the baby boom generation reached retirement age. A blue-ribbon commission chaired by Alan Greenspan worked out the terms, then both parties signed on. Since there was no partisan fight, the press portrayed the massive tax increase as a noncontroversial "good government" reform.

Ever since, working Americans have paid higher taxes on their labor wages--12.4 percent, split between employees and employers. As a result, the Social Security system has accumulated a vast surplus--now around $2.5 trillion and growing. This is the money pot the establishment wants to grab, claiming the government can no longer afford to keep the promise it made to workers twenty-five years ago.

Actually, the government has already spent their money. Every year the Treasury has borrowed the surplus revenue collected by Social Security and spent the money on other purposes--whatever presidents and Congress decide, including more tax cuts for monied interests. The Social Security surplus thus makes the federal deficits seem smaller than they are--around $200 billion a year smaller. Each time the government dipped into the Social Security trust fund this way, it issued a legal obligation to pay back the money with interest whenever Social Security needed it to pay benefits.

That moment of reckoning is approaching. Uncle Sam owes these trillions to Social Security retirees and has to pay it back or look like just another deadbeat. That risk is the only "crisis" facing Social Security. It is the real reason powerful interests are so anxious to cut benefits. Social Security is not broke--not even close. It can sustain its obligations for roughly forty years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, even if nothing is changed. Even reports by the system's conservative trustees say it has no problem until 2041 (that report is signed by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the guy who bailed out the bankers). During the coming decade, however, the system will need to start drawing on its reserve surpluses to pay for benefits as boomers retire in greater numbers.
But if the government cuts the benefits first, it can push off repayment far into the future, and possibly forever. Otherwise, government has to borrow the money by selling government bonds or extend the Social Security tax to cover incomes above the current $107,000 ceiling. Obama endorses the latter option.

Follow the bouncing ball: Washington first cuts taxes on the well-to-do, then offsets the revenue loss by raising taxes on the working class and tells folks it is saving their money for future retirement. But Washington spends the money on other stuff, so when workers need it for their retirement, they are told, Sorry, we can't afford it.

Federal budget analysts try to brush aside these facts by claiming the government is merely "borrowing from itself" when it dips into Social Security. But that is a substantive falsehood. Government doesn't own this money. It essentially acts as the fiduciary, holding this wealth in trust for the "beneficial owners," the people who paid the taxes. This is the bait and switch the establishment intends to execute.

Peter Peterson, a Republican financier who made a fortune doing corporate takeover deals at Wall Street's Blackstone Group, is the Daddy Warbucks of the "fiscal responsibility" crusade. He has campaigned for decades against the dangers that old folks pose to the Republic. Now 82 and retired, Peterson claims he will spend nearly one-third of his $2.8 billion in wealth--he ranks 147 on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans--alerting the public to this threat (leave aside the fact that old people have already paid for their retirement or that Social Security's modest benefits are equivalent to minimum-wage income). The major media treat him adoringly. Most reporters are too lazy (or dim) to check out the facts for themselves, so they simply repeat what Peterson tells them about Social Security.

It is a frightful message. Peterson describes a "$53 trillion hole" in America's fiscal condition--but the claim assumes numerous artful fallacies. His most blatant distortion is lumping Social Security, which is self-funded and sound, with other entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. Those programs do face financial crisis--not because the elderly and poor are greedily gaming the system but because the medical-industrial complex has the profit incentive to drive healthcare costs higher and higher. Healthcare reform can solve the financing problem only if it imposes cost controls on private players like the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Peterson is financing a media blitz. His tendentious documentary--I.O.U.S.A.--opened in 400 theaters and was broadcast on CNN with appropriate solemnity. Last September Peterson bought two full pages in the New York Times to urge the next president to create a "bipartisan fiscal responsibility commission" once he was in office (Peterson was for John McCain). This group of so-called experts would be authorized to design the reforms for Congress to enact. But Peterson does not want Congress to have a full, freewheeling debate on the particulars. The reform package, he suggests, should be submitted to a single "up-or-down vote by Congress, as is done with military base closings." That's one of the gimmicks intended to give politicians cover and protect them from their constituents. It is profoundly antidemocratic. But that's the idea--save the government from the unruly passions of citizens. Peterson's proposal also resembles the notorious fast-track provision, which for years enabled presidents to steamroll Congress on trade agreements, no amendments allowed.

Peterson's proposal would essentially dismantle the Social Security entitlement enacted in the New Deal, much as Bill Clinton repealed the right to welfare. Peterson has assembled influential allies for this radical step. They include a coalition of six major think tanks and four tax-exempt foundations.

Their report--Taking Back Our Fiscal Future, issued jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation--recommends that Congress put long-term budget caps on Social Security and other entitlement spending, which would automatically trigger benefits cuts if needed to stay within the prescribed limits. The same antidemocratic mechanisms--a commission of technocrats and limited Congressional discretion--would shield politicians from popular blowback.

The authors of this plan are sixteen economists from Brookings and Heritage, joined by the American Enterprise Institute, the Concord Coalition, the New America Foundation, the Progressive Policy Institute and the Urban Institute. "Our group covers the ideological spectrum," they claim. This too is a falsehood. All these organizations are corporate-friendly and dependent on big-money contributors. No liberal or labor thinkers need apply, though the group includes some formerly liberal economists like Robert Reischauer, Alice Rivlin and Isabel Sawhill.

The ugliest ploy in their campaign is the effort to provoke conflict between the generations. "The automatic funding of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid impedes explicit consideration of competing priorities and threatens to squeeze out spending for young people," these economists declared. Children, it is suggested, are being shortchanged by their grandparents. This line of argument has attracted financial support from some leading foundations usually associated with liberal social concerns--Annie E. Casey, Charles Stewart Mott, William and Flora Hewlett. Peterson has teamed up with the Pew Trust and has also created front groups of "concerned youth."

Trouble is, most young people did not buy this pitch when George W. Bush used it to sell Social Security privatization. Most kids seem to think Grandma is entitled to a decent retirement. In fact, whacking Social Security benefits, not to mention Medicaid, directly harms poor children. More poor children live in families dependent on Social Security checks than on welfare, economist Dean Baker points out. If you cut Grandma's Social Security benefits, you are directly making life worse for the poor kids who live with her.

The assault sounds outrageous and bound to fail, but the conservative interests may have Obama in a neat trap. Their fog of scary propaganda makes it easier to distort the president's position and blame him for any fiscal disorders driven by the current financial collapse. He will be urged to "do the right thing" for the country and make the hard choices, regardless of petty political grievances (words and phrases he has used himself). Obama's fate may depend on informing the public--now, not later--so that people are inoculated against these artful lies.

The real crisis, in any case, is not Social Security but the colossal failure of the private pension system. Most people know this, either because their 401(k) account is pitifully inadequate, or their company dumped its pension plan, or the plummeting stock market devoured their savings. Obama can protect himself with the public by speaking candidly about this reality and proposing a forceful, long-term solution. He should expand the guarantees that ordinary people need to get their families through these adverse times. Instead of taking away old promises to people, the president should make some new ones. Healthcare reform is obviously an important imperative, but so is retirement security.

The solution to retirement insecurity is the creation of a national pension, alongside Social Security, that would be the bedrock social insurance. Improving Social Security benefits is one step, but it cannot possibly restore what so many middle-class families have lost. Tinkering with the 401(k) would be doomed, because it is basically a tax subsidy for the middle and upper classes, another way to avoid taxes that failed utterly to produce real savings [see Greider, "Riding Into the Sunset," June 27, 2005].

The new universal pension would be mainly self-financing--that is, funded by mandatory savings--but the system would operate as a government-supervised nonprofit, not manipulated by corporate executives or Wall Street firms. A national pension would combine the best qualities of defined-benefit plans and individual accounts. Each worker's pension would be individualized and portable, moving with job changes, but the savings would be pooled with others for diversified investment.

There is nothing radical about this approach. It follows the form of the government's thrift savings plan for civil servants and members of Congress, TIAA-CREF for college professors or other union pension plans jointly managed by labor and management trustees. The crucial difference is that since the new universal pension would be nonprofit, nobody would get to play self-interested games with the money that employees are storing in it for retirement. People could check their accumulated balance at any time.

Washington would set the performance standards and enforce proper behavior, but the operations of retirement programs could be widely decentralized among many private organizations or sector by sector. Other nations, like Australia, have proved this can be both democratic and reliable. Economist Teresa Ghilarducci of the New School has designed a promising and plausible plan (available at the Economic Policy Institute's website, epi.org, or in her book When I'm Sixty-Four: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them). With payroll savings of 5 percent and government-guaranteed returns on investment, average workers could count on pensions that would replace 70 percent of pre-retirement earnings when combined with Social Security. Low-wage earners could be subsidized by government to make up for inadequate pay. Private retirement plans that collect a higher percentage of pay and provide higher benefits could continue, so long as they exceed the federal standard. One great virtue of this approach is that nobody gets left behind, dependent on charity, the predatory instincts of the financial system or the magic of the marketplace.

Another great virtue is that a national pension would confront the country's glaring economic weakness--the collapse of national savings. As the economy digs out of its hole, restoring household savings will be crucial for ultimate recovery and for reduction of our dangerous dependence on foreign capital. Obviously, any system that adds a new payroll tax cannot be introduced at the depth of a recession, but the work of constructing it can begin right now, with the new system phased in gradually, as economic conditions permit. Instead of second-guessing the past and destroying its accomplishments, this reform would look forward and create conditions for a more promising future. Nobody gets a free lunch, and everybody has to take personal responsibility. But unlike what the governing elites are attempting, nobody gets thrown over the side.

Shawn Hannity - Ass Hole Revolutionary

http://forums.hannity.com/showthread.php?t=1326121&page=11

This is a poll in which he asks which type of revolution you support. What? That should be close to treason in my view! What a douche bag!

Ban on Military Coffin Images Lifted!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29410258/

Bobby Jindal: Disasterpiece Theatre in Motion

Here, I'll let you watch him if you like.



Now, this speech bordered on the clownish side. Going beyond Jindals comments about "magnetic levitation" and "volcano monitoring" which I will address in a bit, he simply sounded childish. He talked as though he was reading a book to a childrens class, making sure to put child like emphasis on most of his points. Did he really think he was talking down to children and needed to change his pitch to sound like a story teller? I couldn't understand why he was doing that. Why would you talk to the country like you were talking to a childrens story group?

He mentions a railway with "magnetic levitation". Well, I don't recall anything in the bill besides more railways, and as far as I know, there are no plans for "magnetic levitation". But even if there was, doesn't he realize that buying and putting in high technology goods like high speed rail create hundreds if not thousands of good paying jobs? Unless that train will create it own raw goods, ship them, build its own rails, build itself, operate itself, maintain itself, clean itself, clean its own stations, operate its own stations, and maintain its own stations and the rails, then the project would create hundreds of jobs. And don't forget the shipping.

Volcano monitoring? Having read a good amount of the bill, I don't recall seeing that. But then again, the problem is still that republicans don't know what creates jobs or saves jobs. The places that do volcano monitoring, are ready to law off nearly 100 scientists and engineers. All good paying jobs. A stimulus that saves 100 good paying college educated jobs is a good thing Mr. Jindal. Perhaps he simply doesn't understand how jobs and tax revenue are created.

Before tonight, I had considered Jindal to be a dangerous candidate. One that could seriously run in 2012. But now, he isn't any better than Sara Palin. Whats worse, republicans of the far right are the only ones that don't understand why the dems aren't scared of Palin or Jindal. They go right along and have no clue as to how dumb each of them sounds. And that is why they will lose in 2010 and 2012. They can't do anything about it.

President Obama's First Address to a Joint Session of Congress

The Great Republican Challenge!

I have some interesting data to share with you. It is from presidentialdata.com and shows the comparisons on GOP and Democrat presidents. Everything from GDP growth to unemployment. I challenge a republican to explain why, in wake of these numbers, they can possibly say they are are better for the economy.

http://www.presidentialdata.org/presidential_comparisons.htm

I have a feeling that republicans will be very quiet at this point. As usual, they have talking points, not facts.

Aggregate data from 1960 and 1980 to present (5-05)

1) Deficit (On Budget)

1961-present

Total Democratic Budget Deficits: $1283.8 billion
Total Republican Budget Deficits: $5487.4 billion
Democratic Presidents’ deficits averaged 1.77% of GDP
Republican Presidents’ deficits averaged 3.42% of GDP

1981-present

Total Democratic Budget Deficits: $1004.4 billion
Total Republican Budget Deficits: $5280.1 billion
Democratic Presidents’ deficits averaged 2.06% of GDP
Republican Presidents’ deficits averaged 4.09% of GDP

1a) Deficit (total)

Since World War II

Total Democratic Budget Deficits: $625.1 billion
Total Republican Budget Deficits: $4040.7 billion
Democratic Presidents’ deficits averaged 1.2% of GDP
Republican Presidents’ deficits averaged 2% of GDP

1961-present

Total Democratic Budget Deficits: $608.2 billion
Total Republican Budget Deficits: $4013.2 billion
Democratic Presidents’ deficits averaged 1.21% of GDP
Republican Presidents’ deficits averaged 2.37% of GDP

1981-present

Total Democratic Budget Deficits: $320.3 billion
Total Republican Budget Deficits: $3819.3 billion
Democratic Presidents’ deficits averaged 0.76% of GDP
Republican Presidents’ deficits averaged 2.67% of GDP

2) GDP Growth

Since World War II

Average GDP growth per year under Democratic Presidents: 4.05%
Average GDP growth per year under Republican Presidents: 2.88%

1961-present

Average GDP growth per year under Democratic Presidents: 4.09%
Average GDP growth per year under Republican Presidents: 2.81%

1981-present

Average GDP growth per year under Democratic Presidents: 3.7%
Average GDP growth per year under Republican Presidents: 2.81%

3) Business Investment Growth

Since World War II

Average growth per year under Democratic Presidents: 7.08%
Average growth per year under Republican Presidents: 2.94%

1961-present

Average growth per year under Democratic Presidents: 7.2%
Average growth per year under Republican Presidents: 2.95%

1981-present

Average growth per year under Democratic Presidents: 9.85%
Average growth per year under Republican Presidents: 2.29%

4) Unemployment

Since World War II

Average unemployment per year during Democratic Presidents: 5.03%
Average unemployment per year during Republican Presidents: 5.93%

1961-present

Average unemployment per year during Democratic Presidents: 5.33%
Average unemployment per year during Republican Presidents: 6.24%

1981-present

Average unemployment per year during Democratic Presidents: 5.20%
Average unemployment per year during Republican Presidents: 6.41%

5) Growth in Jobs

Since World War II

Average yearly growth in jobs under Democratic Presidents: 2,082,000
Average yearly growth in jobs under Republican Presidents: 1,167,000
Average yearly percent growth in jobs under Democratic Presidents: 2.67%
Average yearly percent growth in jobs under Republican Presidents: 1.36%

1961-present

Average yearly growth in jobs under Democratic Presidents: 2,391,000
Average yearly growth in jobs under Republican Presidents: 1,307,000
Average yearly percent growth in jobs under Democratic Presidents: 2.69%
Average yearly percent growth in jobs under Republican Presidents: 1.39%

1981-present

Average yearly growth in jobs under Democratic Presidents: 2,884,000
Average yearly growth in jobs under Republican Presidents: 1,253,000
Average yearly percent growth in jobs under Democratic Presidents: 2.37%
Average yearly percent growth in jobs under Republican Presidents: 1.17%

6) Growth in Pay

Since World War II

Average yearly growth in weekly earnings under Democratic Presidents: 0.83%
Average yearly growth in weekly earnings under Republican Presidents: 0.408%

1961-present

Average yearly growth in weekly earnings under Democratic Presidents: 0.48%
Average yearly growth in weekly earnings under Republican Presidents: -0.30%

1981-present

Average yearly growth in weekly earnings under Democratic Presidents: 0.84%
Average yearly growth in weekly earnings under Republican Presidents: -0.34%

Change Has Truly Come! Track The Stimulus!

http://www.recovery.gov/

You have never seen participatory democracy work this well. You can now track the stimulus bill usage online! Read the entire text of the bill, ONLINE! Its open and transparent to everyone. Track the timeline of events, watch your tax money at work!

This is the dawning of a new era of politics people. The days of politics as usual are being shut down by force.

New Deal, Kenyesian Economics, and the Republican ReWrite

Lately it has been fun to watch republicans "state for a fact" that FDR's new Deal economics simply didn't work then and it won't work now. So lets explore some of those myths shall we? Now, all these statistics can be found on the BEA National Economic Accounts web page Here: http://bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp

But I have borrowed from at least one other person who put it into table form.
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Timeline.htm

I took this table out of his time line because I can't find all the files I saved after doing my research on this.

Never the less, the information is verifiable on the website I listed first if you like data and tables and such.

It clearly shows that Hoovers time spiked up our unemployment rate from 3.2% to nearly 25% by the time FDR took office. And when FDR took office, he inherited a very small GDP to work with. We can see that the New Deal brought lower unemployment and higher GDP. New Deal spending was working.

In 1937, FDR caved into Republican calls to pull back spending, and it sent the country into another recession for about a 1 and a half. What was the fix this time? A $5 Billion spending package which quickly brought us out of the recession.

       Tax       Federal    GNP       Unemp.
Year   Receipts  Spending   Growth    Rate
-------------------------------------------------
1929      --       --         --      3.2%  < Hoover era, Great Depression begins
1930     4.2%     3.4%     - 9.4%     8.7
1931     3.7      4.3      - 8.5     15.9
1932     2.9      7.0      -13.4     23.6
1933     3.5      8.1      - 2.1     24.9   < FDR, New Deal begins; contraction ends March
1934     4.9     10.8      + 7.7     21.7
1935     5.3      9.3      + 8.1     20.1
1936     5.1     10.6      +14.1     16.9
1937     6.2      8.7      + 5.0     14.3   < recession begins, May
1938     7.7      7.8      - 4.5     19.0   < recession ends, June
1939     7.2     10.4      + 7.9     17.2
1940     6.9      9.9  
1941     7.7     12.1  
1942    10.3     24.8   
1943    13.7     44.8   
1944    21.7     45.3   
1945    21.3     43.7

Now here is the tricky part. After the recession ended, the spending quickly lowered unemployment by 2%. However, republicans will not that unemployment was still at 15% before World War 2. And they would right. Thats still a 10% reduction in less than 8 years. Thats fabulous!

But here is where they go wrong and the myth begins. They like to claim that it wasn't spending, but WWII that got us over the final hump, despite the fact that unemployment was still continuing to slowly go down. But, what they don't understand is that it truly doesn't matter. The principle behind New Deal and Keynesian economics was still in full force.

Why would WWII have brought us out of the depression? SPENDING! We must understand that we didn't have the war machine we have today. Our military was under built, underfunded, and under outfitted for a war of that magnitude. Right now, we have more tanks, planes, artillery, and vehicles than we have men. But that wasn't the case. WWII created a MASSIVE spending project to fuel the economy. It wasn't the war itself, it was the SPENDING on the war that created the jobs!

In the end, SPENDING was STILL the key to getting out of the depression. If we learned anything from FDR it is that we cannot spend to little. Spending to little will simply not help us. We need to go big or go home.

This stimulus bill will work, if its big enough. Its time republicans stop their lying! Their partisan lying is going to cost this country big time.

Jobless Rate hits 7.6% - PASS THE STIMULUS!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29050656/

Anyone want to argue that building a new homeland security building isn't stimulus, that buying and installing new computers for schools won't create jobs? Anyone? Didn't think so.

Republican obstructionists, get out of the way!

Congress - PASS THIS STIMULUS!

Alright, times up, game over, pass the damn stimulus! Republicans, either be part of the problem or part of the solution. Right now, you are obstructionists in a pointless destructive behavior! I have looked at the parts of this bill that the republicans say aren't stimulus, and I have to say, they are idiots. What part of spending don't you realize is stimulus?

They keep parroting the same stupid false statements. "Its just a spending bill, its not stimulus". WTF? What do you think Kensyian stimulus is? ITS SPENDING! Almost every single project on this bill needs PEOPLE to design, build, and maintain it! Designers, engineers, raw material harvest, shipping, building, renovating, and other such jobs! More teachers, tech jobs, and other good paying jobs as well! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

You lost, get over it! This country needs to you be bi-partisan and you continue the same failed crap! Yet now, the only one giving in the bi-partisan give and take, is Obama and the dems, giving up projects one at a time, and adding tax cuts! BS! You lost, we have rejected your failed policies! VOTE FOR THE DAMN STIMULUS!

As of right now, I can say I voted for some republicans this last time around. Any republican who doesn't vote for this will earn my vote against them next time on this issue alone. Stop getting in the way of recovery and either lying or being idiots about what is in this bill! Get out of the way republicans, turn off your god, Rush Limbaugh, and stop the republican noise machine and help this nation!